HARD DRINKING IN ENGLAND.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 314, 26 April 1877, Page 4

HARD DRINKING IN ENGLAND.

A singular instance of the power of absorbing liquor was lately brought to

light at a London Police Court. Three Britons and a son of France drank at a single sitting two champagne-cups, nine bottles of champagne, thirty large and thirty-seven small glasses of brandy, twenty-one bottles of soda, and a single bottle of very old brandy, and they smoked twenty-five choice cigars. On the day following, the same jovial party again assembled and drank nineteen large and thirty-two small glasses of brandy, one bottle of old brandy, one bottle of ChabHs, six bottles of champagne, and as many champagne - cups. Numerous cigars were smoked on this occasion, but no inventory was taken thereof. The object of this joyous sacrifice to Bacchus, twice repeated, was asserted to have been a conspiracy on the part of three of|the revellers to obtain the signature of the fourth to a bill of exchange for LSOOO. The bill appears to have been signed and put into circulation, and hence the proceedings before the London Police Court. The signer of the bill, a certain Le Hunt Doyle, is the possessor of L3OOO per annum, and it came out in evidence that one of the conspirators had declared his intention of sucking it all out of the harddrinking Doyle. The sonant of Doyle stated that his master was never sober, and that as soon as he had slept ofT the effects of a drinking bout he would call for a " split"—that is sodawater and brandy —and commenced his bibulous practices. The circumstance is worth remarking as testifying to the fact that the race of hard drinkers in Great Britain is not yet extinct.